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MarkWhittington writes "With the flight of the Shenzhou 9, which includes the first docking between a Chinese spacecraft and a prototype space station module, a renewed debate has arisen over the implications of Chinese space feats. China is planning a large space station by the end of this decade. It has expressed the desire to land people on the moon sometime in the next decade. Scientists, foreign policy experts and journalists debate whether China has supplanted the U.S. as a space power and whether that matters. 'In reality, the implications of China's move could be a much cooler third option: a new space race between the Chinese government and U.S. startups. While China is 50 years behind the U.S. government, they are much more comparable to U.S. companies. It was only a couple of weeks ago that SpaceX made history by becoming the first private company to successfully dock a space module to a station in orbit. This means they are roughly 10-15 years behind the Chinese government, but they could gain fast.'"

The bottom line, what on earth is spaceX's motivation to go to mars? The thing with corporations running things, is they have to be profitable. Hence why spaceX's missions are to deliver to ISS etc... China just has to get a guy there and put up a flag. SpaceX has to, find a resource on mars, figure out a way to obtain said resource, get good enough quanities of it, and bring it back and sell it, for roughly more money then the trip cost. Unless of course they can write it off as a multi-billion dollar marketing plan. But even that, marketing to whom? They aren't in a business where they can easilly increase their number of customers. Only governments, and multi billionares can even think of hiring them, and well, I'm pretty sure every government with interest in stuff from space, and person ritch enough to actually afford a space tourist trip, knows of them already. Maybe a tourist trip where they can bring along say 15-20 of the people on the forbes list who are brave enough to want to be part of the first trip to land on mars, that might fund it.

Not sure why were you downmodded, coz you have definitely have a point. If the flight-time was that much of consideration, the Concorde wouldn't be only one on the market, and would have been replaced right away by some rival. I'm fairly sceptical with the price of a suborbital flight compared to a jet-engine powered aircraft, like Concorde was. It makes more sense to run aircrafts with hybrid jet propulsion than heavy boosters for human space flights if the goal is only terrestrial transport.

We can't get people to Mars economically or technologically even. Anyone you send will just die from a number of factors including exposure to solar radiation, micrometeorites, lack of gravity, and we can't physically take enough oxygen, food, and water there and back. Plus, if anything else were to happen, they'd be dead too because nobody could reach them in time to help them. It's a fool's journey.

Elon Musk started SpaceX because he wants mankind to be a multi-planet species. He's not an idiot and wants to be profitable, but he is willing to sink a lot of that profit into doing something historic and necessary for our survival. It goes against every grain of my being to think someone is really willing to put his money where his mouth is, but it seem Elon Musk might be the exception that proves mankind's greed.

Wernher von Braun, designer of the Saturn V, also wanted to go to Mars and had even written a fairly detailed book [wikipedia.org] on how to do so. But von Braun knew that to get there, he had to take small steps and not a single giant leap toward the Red Planet. Maybe this is what Musk and von Braun have in common (beside both being naturalized Americans), their willingness to go after intermediate goals (the Moon or LEO) while keeping their ultimate goal (Mars and beyond) still within sight.

Elon Musk still has control of SpaceX, so it does what he wants it to do. He wants to go to Mars.SpaceX was created to get him to Mars.Tesla Motors was created to get him about on Mars once he's there. Why else would he develop an electric powered car?

Martian rock - most major universities and science research institutes would buy some. Rich people would buy some just because they could.

Certainly, and Elon Musk has a good budget to do things, but you still have to factor in, it is a finite budget. He cannot go toe to toe with china, purely funneling income from his other businesses and expect to come out on top. We can easilly get to where we've gone 50 years ago on a fairly small budget, especially with ex-nasa working for him. But actually doing the level of in depth R&D that is going to be needed to take us to new frontiers, I just don't think that can be done without a government b

I do mind. I seriously think China will get up there and stay before the US unless the US pimp it up as a face saver. China will do it for a tiny proportion of the budget with less fanfare and make it work. Eventually.
'To infinity and beyond'

They also like their propaganda, and beating the US to something this prestigious would do great things for national pride. Remember why the US went into the space race in the first place - because they couldn't let some bunch of dirty commies get there first.

I agree, if you broaden the definition of ROI to include the non-financial benefits of having a space program. For one thing, it's likely to be good propaganda in the future if the Party can brag to its citizens that they are in space, while the other guys aren't. It's also a great way to stress test military-grade hardware without the other countries raising a hoot. People would think differently of Iran and North Korean if these two supposed wannabees already have a space station in orbit or in the Moon.

When the Japanese sent their spacecraft to a comet, collected some comet dusts, and then brought those space dusts back to earth, I don't see CCP immediately sent their own spacecraft in doing the same thing

It's more likely that the CCP really does not care what others think - they just do whatever they do on their own schedule

I think that's what most of us wanted, considering China is a communist country who is rapidly increasing the size and technical capacity of their military. And of course the nuclear warheads they have. Why would we want to give them cutting-edge missile technology?

Communism:
* No capital (private, or state) -> Russia has state, has private capital. -> Russia isn't communist.
* No market (state planned or unregulated) -> Russia has a partially regulated market as most of modern capitalist countries, including the USA. -> Russia isn't communist.
* Private property (under private or institutional control) -> Russia has all the protection for private property, the right to buy, the right to sell, with the obvious exception (as in market regulation). Russia isn't communist.
* Wage work -> Vast majority of people in Russia are working for wage, for a minority that owns all the means of production (capitalist). -> Russia is definitely capitalist.
* Government and the state exist: No capital and private property could exist without a central (national) enforcement. -> Russia has a strong, nationalistic, government which upholds a law for the rich, bash the poor. In Russia there's also a widespread, highly organized criminal secondary rule, for the same reason.
* Capitalists are making profit, while the working class is exploited. -> While this is true all over the world, in Russia, due to the corruption of the state, many health and safety regulation is circumvented, and unions are threatened by criminal organizations, resulting one of the most unregulated capitalism in the world. -> Russia isn't just capitalist, but the social consequences of barely regulated exploitation are devastating.

If you ask me, I don't refer to China as a communist place (note that being a communist country is a contradiction), but as a state-capitalist country, meaning that the state is the major owner of the national resources and therefore the biggest capitalist of them all. Never the less, you can see how the Chinese capitalism is compatible with the "Western" version of it, given that China is bailing out the EU, also developed private industry and so on.

Capital can be concentrated or highly distributed, but as long as the society runs on the principles of market available property (public or private does not matter, since if nobody else, Chinese government can sell national assets), on the internal mechanism of investment, exploitation and market valorization, than we're still talking about the roughly the same social organisation, that is, capitalism.

Monopolization is a natural process within capitalism, so even the so called free markets lasts only as long as the state power regulates the economy (anti-trust laws [wikipedia.org], anyone?). But as political and economical power always tend to merge because people with considerable wealth are commanding over larger amount of economy, hence they rule over larger proportion of people, directly or indirectly, the state is always central to the capitalist system, either in the framework of the western style indirect market manipulation, or with being in charge directly over the economy, like in China. These are different politico-economic management styles, not entirely opposite social organisations. Monopolization can take charge through economic power, or political. But the end-result is the same. As an anecdotal side note, I'm from a country, which was considered as socialist/communist for 40 years, until 22 years ago. I've seen both management styles, through the transition and now living in the west, and I have to tell you, that the ideological differences are just rather covering up the converging features of the two political and economical management, than actually creating differences on a social level.

Communism is an economic system, whereas democracy is a political system.

Not in parrochial American lingo, it is not. Here we proudly chew a blade of grass or wheat and with clenched teeth we call communist whatever doesn't fit our simpleton pick-up truck world view. Why do you use sound logic and bring up historically accurate hippy facts? Why do you hate America?

What gets me is, the article claims the Chinese are going to build a 'big space station'. Actually, the current plans are to have a 60 ton station in orbit by 2020. The ISS, on the other tentacle, weighs approximately 450 tons.

If the average Chinese person is smaller than the average American person, it could be argued that the average Taikonaut is smaller than the average Astronaut - so while the station may be physically smaller, it will appear bigger!

I find this astronaut, cosmonaut and taikonaut so embarrassing for fuck sake. It's the same fucking thing. A person is space (or anywhere for that matter) isn't defined by the nationality but what she/he does and in what quality.

What gets me is, the article claims the Chinese are going to build a 'big space station'. Actually, the current plans are to have a 60 ton station in orbit by 2020. The ISS, on the other tentacle, weighs approximately 450 tons.

Consider the tone of TFA, and then consider the real aim of TFA, and you can understand all the necessary exaggerations

I won't be surprised if those behind TFA has something to do with the defence industrial complex - after all, it's the defence industrial complex stands to gain the most if the people scared enough to demand their congress representative to "revive our space program before the Chinese overtakes us"

The US had plenty of good reasons for barring China from the ISS, the most conspicuous of these being that China would likely not contribute much, if anything, to the program and would end up trying to steal as much technology as they could for their own benefit.

Learning for their own benefit is fine. NASA is very open to helping others learn. The specific reason that China was not allowed into the project, though, is because there are laws in place since the Tiananmen Square massacre that prevent exporting military technology and arms to China. Space technology very much helps the military, and there are very good reasons why most western countries still do not arm China with the most advanced weapons and rocket technology on Earth.

And I would not consider research that much, as most companies would most likely not benefit from a trip to Mars, other than prestige. And that would be a quite expensive PR stunt.

Did you think the same about docking with the ISS? There's not cash at the ISS. But that's going to be profitable for SpaceX, as is moving people to-and-from. They were testing the SuperDraco escape rocket engines a couple days ago for manned flights with the Dragon capsule... https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/214831794103664640 [twitter.com]

Let me tell you that the real deal here, that the only profit incentive for the private space industry, other than launching satellites to Earth orbit depends on government money. So, at the end of the day, this is a government founded market, if the govt pulls the plug on space exploration, the space industry with heavy launchers would disappear in a minute all together. Given the current attitudes to space exploration, there's no new profit incentive rising, and without any ground breaking new scientific

He doesn't do much else? Like him or not, I can't think of many people that have done more than he has. And it's not like he sets small goals.

SolarCity, which apparently is the largest provider of solar systems in the US. That would be enough for any person to feel like they achieved something.

Co-founded Tesla Motors, who brought the electric car back from the dead, and last I'd heard, is actually profitable. Also provides powertrain tech to other auto companies. Company is worth over a billion now, the Model S starts production this year and the Model X starts in 2014. I believe they already maxed out preproduction reservations.

SpaceX. Started with $100m of his own money. Has $1.6 billion (minimum) to $3.x billion (max) in contracts for resupply flights to the ISS. Just made history as the first commercial company to complete one of those missions... and it was a nearly flawless one. Equipment to make the Dragon capsule safe for manned flight is in the works (as linked above).

Of course there's Paypal (formerly his X.com). I imagine he did alright on that deal... which was no small feat.

Sure he talks big, but the dude is only 40 and has already done a lot.

None of his other businesses matter very much... sure they're successful and making money, congratulations, but really, if Paypal and Tesla never existed, we'd just be using Google Payments and driving Nissan Leafs, no big deal.

On the other hand, SpaceX is a game-changer and completely different from anything else that came before. They're shaking the space industry to its very foundations and I think if they're successful with the Falcon Heavy, nothing will ever be the same again.

Google Payments and the Nissan Leaf wouldn't exist without the clear indicator that those products can succeed - neither was a precursor to the Musk products, and thus the Musk products had an impact on their creation.

Why the hell can't we progress unless there's some bogeyman to 'win' against. It seems like the same people who want to cripple funding for the sciences and technology suddenly get interested if someone else puts bigger phallic-shaped rockets into space. Oh no! The Chinese might establish a space station! Well good for them. I hope they continue doing well, as that seems to be the only thing that will drag us out from our caves.

Because we are human beings and that is what we *do*. The desire to compete with those in the same "group" as you and win are wired into our brains, even our cousins the chimps form teams and engage in competition...though in their case eating the losers babies is always a possibility.

Well even FOSS is primarily copying applications that existed firstly as proprietary ones. E.g. OpenOffice vs Microsoft Office, GIMP vs Photoshop, Scribus vs InDesign, etc... Even Gnome is ostensibly a copy of a windowed OS. Most of the first motivations of writing GCC was to provide a toolchain to replace and be better than the proprietary ones.Plus FOSS has always claimed to be better (ethical, practical, whatever) than closed source.

Competetion is part of our nature, it works. It is sometimes called evo

Just to let you know, there's no such thing as human nature, hence competing can't be a part of our nature. On the other hand, there's an natural pressure on every living being is to become more successful in adaptation and that is at the root cause of competing in nature, including humans. But as humans, we tend to be more subtle than this. We recognize that it is not only our genetic heritage that must survive, at least not only on personal level, but our groups, our nations, and our species as such for b

Do you even bother reading comments, or do you just respond to what you want to read so you can feel all self-righteous and indignant? Did I say that every single human being does everything in the name of competition? Didnt I specifically mention in groups and out groups(for which OSS is mostly made for the in-group, and they often times like to compete with the 'out-group', the proprietary software vendors). Monkeys also cooperate for the common good, that does not preclude them also competing and figh

Um. No they aren't. The US government did these same things 50 years ago, but is no longer capable of easily repeating its past feats. The first US moon landing program took less than 10 years from conceptual announcement to a giant leap for mankind. How long would it take for the US to do the same thing again? I'm not confident we even could. I'm not sure we could even replicate China's docking-to-a-station performance in 10 years, now that we've abandoned all of our previously successful manned spaceflight programs.

Remember, when they sent out the astronauts to the moon, the computing power of the entire space module is less than a 386 chip

Today, even a not-so-smart phone has computing power much more than the 386

In other words, if USA wants to go to moon today, it no longer has to do it from scratch

Correct, but modern engineering is plagued by over-engineering, design by committee, and (when the government is involved) pork. For example, Congressional funding for NASA and the military specify which districts the components are made in. We also demand better safety and testing (which takes time) where sometimes the gadgets broke. Safety isn't a bad thing. But in 1969 we were willing to risk 3 men's lives with a reasonable probability they would 1) crash 2) get stranded or 3) overshoot the moon and keep going (all of which results in them dying).

There was a time when the right mix of brains, creativity, and guts came together. Since then, we've gotten smarter but (with respect to NASA) less creative and more risk-adverse.

I think the real difference is nothing to do with computer power; after all the Russian space program used drum timers (rad hard and easy to test). The difference is that, to Western countries at least, immediately after a war, casualties in non-military exploits are more acceptable. As time goes on and the threat of war recedes, they are less so. The Moon landings were possible for the US because it was still involved in Vietnam and still perceived the Soviet Union as a credible threat; the risk to the li

The first US moon landing program took less than 10 years from conceptual announcement to a giant leap for mankind.

Only because work on key components had started as early as 1956, and because design and engineering on pretty much everything involved was already well underway when Kennedy made his speech. Without that running start and all that prep work, the goal of "the end of the decade" would have been unreachable. Kennedy didn't make his choice of stunts in a vacuum.

China is behind, I'm sure, but not by 50 years. Their achievements are maybe what the US did 50 years ago, but that doesn't mean that they are technologically that far behind.

NASA has learnt a lot from the moon landings and the shuttle program and everything else they did, a lot of that knowledge is published and the Chinese will definitely learn as much as they can from it. They can buy rocket technology from US companies if they want, too. They will be behind, the most state-of-the-art tech NASA has will

So what? The Chinese are so stupid they can't learn from anyone else so they have to repeat every other country's mistake?

It's not about "repeating every other country's mistake"

It's about the very fact that there is simply _NO_ way to build up any serious industrial program without having any pollution

And...

The West (including Japan) aren't helpful in that regards either

When China was progressing ahead in the 1980's and 1990's, the West (and Japan) already had technologies that they were already using, that can produce the same amount of products while drastically cutting down on the pollution

Again, if China would change its policies and let foreign companies operate freely in China, there wouldn't be the need for these restrictions (imposed by the companies themselves). The restrictions mostly have to do with China since your company undoubtedly has a Chinese partner and there is a concern they will simply take the technology (a very legitimate concern). Obviously since your company operates outside of the US and you can easily get the technology in other countries this is the case. It is di

Depends what you mean by "no longer capable." No longer capable in the sense of lacking the technical know-how? Of course not. No longer capable in the sense of not having the assembly lines actually set up this moment, not having the raw aluminum and ceramics already sitting on the loading docks, not having the techs already hired and trained in operating the special lathes and die presses? Sure.

I don't see why this is a very interesting definition, however. If you hire a programmer and say he's "not

We don't need to go back to the Moon. We went there, planted a flag, and left. There is no reason to go back to the Moon or to Mars. If China wants to waste a few hundred billion dollars on space, let them. That is one expensive flag planting ceremony.

We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one which we intend to win, and the others, too.

So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this State of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward--and so will space.

As soon as the US got to the moon, they rested, they waited. While space will be conquered by those who are moving forward.

"The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space -- each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision." – XKCD [xkcd.com]

Because of the lower gravity the moon is a potential space port that'll make other space-based ventures much easier.
When the raw materials to build the equipment for such ventures are also present it becomes even more interesting.

But you have to be able to understand/appreciate humanity is not ultimately bound to earth.
As a matter of fact, there is even debate if we (life) originates on this earth!

Go where exactly? You are clearly deluded by too much science fiction in your diet. There is nothing out there and we are so technologically backward, it will be literally centuries till we have the technology to go anywhere economically in our own solar system. After we develop economical fusion power, can feed and cloth all the people on the planet, and have a stable world political and economic system - then MAYBE that might be the time to start thinking about exploring with manned missions. Right no

Cheaper on the whole perhaps, but definitely not easier... doing a manned mars mission from Earth is insanely complicated. By comparison doing it from the moon is like walking down to the corner store in a metropolis.

The bulk price of iridium (to take a random example) is 23,000 $/kg. A small asteroid of 1 km3 contains 1 million tons of material. Even if it contains merely 10 ppm iridium, such a space rock is worth 230 million $, and that's excluding other materials.

However, getting your process up to an asteroid (or getting the ore down to a factory) is still quite hard. That's where your "stepping stone" comes in. That's when it's convenient of you only have to deal with a fraction of earth's gravity.

You're right and wrong at the same time.Yes it's expensive. But chemical factories are expensive anyway. Don't forget that for example Shell have built a gas-to-liquid factory in Qatar at a price tag of 24 billion (google for Pearl GTL). And that's not for fancy minerals, but for ordinary liquid fuels.

Scale matters, and if you make your operation big enough, and you produce long enough, it will have a payback time.

The costs of using a Space Shuttle to get a kg of payload into LEO was around 5000 $/kg. So, f

And you also mustn't forget that the moon has lots of metal already. In reality if you're willing to do some automated assembly and don't mind it taking longer (for gathering/smelting/forging) you can actually get a large part of what you need right from the moon itself.

Perhaps more to the point, the first factory you'd probably send up the typical way, but there's nothing stopping you from building the second, third and fourth for free (by comparison) once you get setup.

I'm still referring to the space race between US commercial start ups and China's space agency. Of course NASA wouldn't build some mining colony. It's not in their interest to earn money. With NASA out of the picture, the US tax payer won't feel a thing, and nobody needs their support.

Did Shell ask the US public for support when they built their factory in Qatar? Nope.

If there's money to be made, it will happen. And in fact, certain daring entrepreneurs are already looking at asteroid mining.

a renewed debate has arisen over the implications of Chinese space feats

Well, no. Not really. A couple of pundits and usual suspects lobbing blog entries back and forth at each other, and an article from a third string news service (Yahoo!) does not a renewed debate make... Most because the pundits and usual suspects have never shut up in the first place. If they weren't "debating" China, they'd be "debating" commercial space, or Mars missions, or something else they have no power to influence.

It's a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing.

In reality, the implications of China's move could be a much cooler third option: a new space race between the Chinese government and U.S. startups.

If it's anything like the last space race (a bunch of sterile stunts), I can't see why anyone with any sense would think it was cool. Not that China has shown any interest in such a race, or in any other manner of giving wood to the space fanboy crowd.

I think you're wrong about the second, however. The Chinese appear to have the same general interest in space stunts that the Soviets did: to convince their own population that progress is amazing, that the future is Chinese, and that all those peculiar rumors about brutality and privation in the countryside, or crashing real estate prices on the coast, or high-speed rail roadbeds cracking because of shoddy and corrupt construction, or the wild male/female imbalance in 20-year-

The Chinese appear to have the same general interest in space stunts that the Soviets did: to convince their own population that progress is amazing

[citation needed]

It's much more likely that your imagination had run wild

In China, there were no "China is great because we go to the space" slogans blaring across TV screens, nor anything like that

The average Chinese look at the space program thing as a natural progression - for them, it could be the Taiwanese or the Hongkongnese who done it, they don't really care, as long as _someone_ from East Asia is doing it

It is a dumb statement that china is supposedly 50 years behind with respect to the US. It is an irrelevant statement. Much more important is the fact that China's development is rising rapidly while the development of the US is in decline.

And despite all the criticisms of the details of NDT's claims, I strongly believe that the underlying theme remains valid. Americans did in fact stop dreaming. The pursuit of science, engineering, and technology, the VALUATION of these things as a foundation for a competitive, progressive, and forward-looking society, is now almost entirely lost upon the American public, replaced by willful superstition, fear, and ignorance. Replaced by doubts about man-made climate change, irrational religious fervor for creationism and other Biblical dogmas, and indeed, an active distrust and suspicion of scientific and critical thinking.

This is not about what China is doing, folks. This is about what America once did on the belief that anything was possible, and about what America no longer does because that attitude has been replaced by a sense of complacency.

This isn't about technology. It's about national will. To quote Londo Mollari in Babylon 5, we've become decadent, obsessed with arts and trinkets. Gone is Kennedy's "Ask not what your country can do for you" too. The USA is a nation of pussies now. Everyone wants a handout, and no one wants to contribute to an endeavor greater than themselves. It's all, gimme gimme gimme. We could've been on Mars by 1980 easily. Instead now we can't even get to low Earth orbit. It isn't because we don't know how. It's because our own navels are much more interesting. Yes, I'm disgusted.

" There is no mechanism to enforce the 1967 Outer Space Treaty except for a given country’s unwillingness to undergo international opprobrium. Moreover, a country can withdraw from the treaty at will. China tends to do what it wants to do, unless the economic or political price is perceived to be too high. The potential of the Moon and cislunar space may outweigh their sense of geopolitical risk or concern about international ostracism."

1. "Nasa is not a provider of real jobs" -> Flame bait. Presenting a highly debatable statement, like this needs argument. You know, extraordinary claim needs extraordinary evidence. Now, he did not provide a tiny bit of argument here, so he is clearly ideological troll. Since NASA do have products, somebody has to work there, thus NASA provides jobs where people do real work.

2. "Especially during times where many tax-payers are feeling the impact of the economic crisis". Well, there's already a false presumption when somebody talks about "tax-payers" in general. There's no general interest between citizens, tax-payers or whatever. Some tax-payers want to disarm the enormous offensive capacity of the USA, and some want to invest even more money in to it. The military budget is magnitude greater than the NASA budget all together, and remember that NASA isn't only works on space missions, but there are other aeronautical, technological projects running along with the space tech. NASA had its budgets slashed since the space race. The military spending however... you know the money that governments invest in order to spy on, and kill other people, and destroy their stuff. Any space agency could do miracles with even the half of that money. So much for the crisis. Not to mention the bailout of banks, and other stupid shit.